Dubia Colors

[MonsterPyxie]

welp, here's my finding fella's.


Here is a female with BRIGHT orange colors.









Here is a different one with a seemingly unique patter on the head portion. (or prothorax)






Here is a DARK pattern of sorts.







here is a white/albino/Axanthic female







notice her different shape, and the underside of her abdomen seems softer, and thinner, yet wider? kinda odd.


here is a male














enjoy!

(kinda tempted to put the male and female together on there own, in there own tupperware....... HRM!

[JeffreH]

I'm going to ask my friend Kyle about this one, he's a cockroach ascended being... do you guys mind if I use your pictures in the email I'll write him?

[Kreamcheese]

Not at all. If you're able to find out what might be the reasoning for this then please do!

[MonsterPyxie]

I'm going to ask my friend Kyle about this one, he's a cockroach ascended being... do you guys mind if I use your pictures in the email I'll write him?

feel free to use mine.

the male looks like it could just be coming out of molt or something, I will check on them in the morning, and if they are still white, I will remove them and give them there own little home together. It will be a interesting experiment.

[JeffreH]

I appreciate the photos guys, I used them in my email to Kyle and he promptly responded. THE RESULTS ARE IN!

I'm pasting his response to my email regarding the roach coloration and your pictures (the Very Light, The Very Dark, and the "Axanthic" looking adult females).

Kyle from Home - Roach Crossing , unde the username of "Zephyr" , "ZephyrG" and "ZephAmp" on a number of invert related forums wrote:

Message body

"Hello Jeff.
I have watched with a certain amount of amusement many people try to isolate various strains of dubias only for them to give up or the strains prove untrue in the end.
Some of these color differences may be genetic; for example, the dark and more-striped phenotypes appear to fit this mold. However, in the case of extremely orange individuals, the cause is more than likely entirely environmental. As dubias are often kept as feeders, they are also often kept in conditions that are not ideal for development (per say) and more oriented towards collecting nymphs and overall breeding. These tend to be drier than pet roach environments and thus individuals can molt with any number of physical anomalies. I have seen this in other species of Blaberid when crowding has been an issue; there are two sides of thinking involved. The first, which I believe, is that a lack of food, increased dryness, and decreased access to moisture other than ambient humidity causes a physiological defect in roach species that causes them to become hypopigmented. The other school of thought (which very well could be true but would need scientific experimentation) is that overcrowding in roaches causes them to emit pheromones causing effects similar to swarming locusts, signaled by a change in the coloration of the nymphs which can be molted out of. The reason I am inclined to think against this being the case is that it often takes several molts for roach nymphs to stop showing the effects of the coloration alteration.
However, in an argument for the genetic basis of these color changes, I have heard that in Germany they have isolated a light color morph of B. dubia (possibly another species but the news is relatively new), however from the pictures I have seen it does not resemble the orange dubias people have been finding in their colonies in the US.
I hope this helps clarify some things. :P "
-Kyle

[Badger]

Buzzkill. I was hoping it would be genetic. Either way, thanks for the info Jeff, and once I finally can get a roach colony I'll keep an eye out for abnormalities.

[Kreamcheese]

Thank you Jeff for contacting kyle. That was great information that he had to say about what may be causing it.

[MonsterPyxie]

HRM. idk.

I know my roaches are at pretty optimum temp's, humidity, and have a premium food supply... Maybe to much of a good thing/s ?


I'm puzzled.

[JeffreH]

I think the key phrase in Kyle's email was the "per say" in paranthesis. He makes a strong argument when he claims that dubia are raised for maximal production, and not necessarily "ideal." I'll elaborate:

Most serious roach enthusiasts create somewhat naturalistic caging for their inverts; this inlcudes a substrate, often dry hardwood/oak leaves, and decaying wood to munch on. Furthermore, this allow the ambient humidity to remain more constant and creates a number of constant food and moisture sources. The ideal B. dubia environment in all honestly is probably an enclosure with a coir based substrate, littered with oak leaves, and having lots of dead wood available for hiding and munching on. Also - the temperatures we keep them at for production are not their ideal. We actually kind of force them to grow at an extremely rapid rate for our production goals. Higher temperatures force them to dehydrate faster than they can absorb water for metabolic purposes (thats why roaches kept warmer seem to consume absolutely massive quanitity of moisture product).

Believe it or not, temperatures where B. dubia come from very seldom exceed ~86 degrees F. Can they handle 100? you bet, and you force their metabolism to go crazy which leads to roaches attaining adult size rapidly and therefore reproducing at a more rapid rate. B. dubia's optimal environment is honestly temperatures between 75-90 degrees MAX... probably a thermogradiant that allows for a high 70's cool end and an 88 degree hot spot. They may grow a little slower and breed a little slower, but thats the kind of environment they naturally live in. Also, overcrowding... while I agree they do breed better in crowded conditions (along with a number of other species, such as some in the Blaberus genus) that doesn't necessarily mean its optimal for their development. Pheromone production begins to dictate breeding as priority over doing other daily roachies activites, it becomes more of a massive orgy rather than living in boring normal roach land.

If they have a constant supply of food and a constant supply of moisture, they will do their best to reproduce at the maximal rate they can. Temperatures are proportional to growth in insects (to a certain point) because metabolism increases with temps. But that doesn't mean staying at a constant ultimate metabolism is good, and that may be representative in their pigmentation. Not saying that keeping them the way we do is "bad" because we are attaining our goal of producing as many nymphs as possible for our herps - but many of us rearing feeding insects would get back-handed by a die-hard roach enthusiast for keeping them the way we do LOL!

Edit: When I say "you" I'm not referring to anyone, should really read "we" because I keep my feeders on the hotter side, etc as well. I practically neglect half of my feeder colonies and baby the heck out of my collector species = )